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You ever get a random text from a friend/family member who is inquiring if you're interested in going on a random trip. Well, that's how this one started out with my aunt-in-law Aimel of El Paso Trip and Everglades fame got an itch to go to Washington DC just to visit Shenandoah National Park. Of course Rebe and myself could not turn down a trip and when Aimel pitched it as a Friday trip, I suggested that we leave Thursday night and get an extra full day out of it. And that's what we did.
Friday June 3rd
We arrived late and since Aimel had a friend that lived in the DC suburbs, we crashed there on Thursday night and got up early to get a start on for the first day. I am sure most of you have never heard of Shenandoah National Park, as it is not really a place that garners a lot of attention since it is not a flashy park or has any really famous formations. The park is located in northern Virginia and the more famous Appalachian Trail runs directly through the park, being in the Appalachians you can imagine this park looks like tree covered mountains. With that description you would not be far off. The park weaves its way through the tops of the mountains and goes for a little over 100 miles.
The park is only a little more than an hour outside of DC so it makes a good day trip for the locals and also for people visiting DC. We left the DC suburbs around 830am and arrived near the park at 930am, where to start in a 100 mile long park? Well, I thought we should start at one end, the north end, and see where that takes us and gives us a little time to flush out a plan for the day.
We stopped at the Dickey Ridge Visitors Center to grab some souvenirs and a quick chat with the rangers to see where we should go. We drove through the park at the posted speed of 35mph stopping occasionally at an overlook that caught our eye and after an hour of driving we stopped at the Pinnacles Overlook to eat our wonderful ham sandwich lunch.
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| Pinnacles Overlook |
Continuing on with our journey we made it down to Skyland, the highest part of Skyline Drive, where we topped up our water in preparation for the first hike to Whiteoak Falls.
One thing we noticed about this park and the trails (it makes sense in retrospect) if you have a park that is near the top of the mountains, none of the trails are going to be flat. You are either going down into a valley or up onto another overlook, needless to say this was not an easy couple of strolls. Whiteoak Falls were of course down and down and down the hill, and led to a nice big series of waterfalls that were easily viewable from a nice rock outcropping on the trail.
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| Whiteoak Falls |
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| Aimel and Rebe at the falls |
After getting back to the car, we made a quick stop over at Skyland again for a quick water top off and then headed for our second hike of the day which was just another mile down the road. We were going to do the highest peak in the park which is called Hawksbill, not sure why it has that name but it is what it is. This hike has a direct path up to the top, but then there is also a loop that ventures onto the Appalachian Trail for a little bit to make you feel like a real outdoorsman. Of course this was not flat but it was a nice rewarding view at the end of the hike.
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| View from Hawksbill Summit |
Two hikes had us a bit hungry, so we headed over to the closest place that was serving real food and of course that was Skyland where there was a dining room and a tavern which was open until 9. We got us a nice table by the window so we could look out on the mountains and enjoy our meal. With the sun heading for the horizon, I was researching locations in the park for good sunset pictures and of course the place I wanted to go was a good 10 miles away. Now 10 miles in Houston is a 9 minute drive, 15 minutes on a bad day but in this national park with the 35mph speed limit this was at least a 20 minute drive. But it was now getting close to sunset which means the deer start to show up and along with them all the traffic and people stopping in the road to take pictures. Of course we got to the overlook just as the sun ducked behind the mountain, but there's always tomorrow.
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| The Point Overlook just after sunset |
From there it was an hour back to our hotel in Luray, VA (still dodging deer the entire way).
Saturday June 4th
Another full day planned and you have to start the day with the breakfast of champions from Hardees'. Do not know why we thought this was the best choice but for some reason we (Aimel and I) were excited about it even if it wasn't great. It was quick and filling and that's all you need when trying to fuel up for a tough day of walking up and down hills.
We drove to the park and began our day at Dark Hollow Falls trail, I want to say this is the most famous waterfall in the park as I saw it in a few pictures. Also being a Saturday, we expected it to be crowded but it was not overly crazy and we found a parking spot pretty easily. Oh, did I mention it was 29 miles (46 minutes) from our hotel? This trail is way south in the park and it gave us another chance to see more of the park.
Like I said earlier, all the trails in the park are either up or down and this one was straight down for .75 of a mile. Not much to see on the way down but the waterfall itself was pretty cool. A mutlilevel cascade of water.
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| Upper mini-fall |
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| Lower falls again |
The hike back up was a good slog, I even got to confront a person with a dog who wasn't supposed to have their dog. He was some how angry at me because he was breaking the rules, "why you so angry dude?"
We continued our hiking over at the Blackrock Summit trail, there are two ways to get to the summit. The first being a straight route to the summit or you can make a loop of it and a longer walk through the woods a bit more. The view was non-existent on this trail but there were so many mountain laurel bushes on the trail and this was prime blooming season, such a beautiful bush.
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| Mountain Laurel |
The trail ends at the summit where there is this mound of, yep you probably guessed it, black rocks. Great views from the top, and Aimel, who is afraid of heights, wanted to climb to the top but of course we had to push her a bit when we got closer to the top.
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| Blackrock Summit |
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| Blackrock Summit |
We headed back to Skyland for dinner at the restaurant, since it was Saturday we weren't able to get a window seat and even the tables outside were full, even more hikers who we assume were doing the Appalachian trail were out. I think I forgot to mention the dessert, damn that stuff was good. It was a blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream and a separate scoop of blueberry ice cream.
I had plans of hiking the Stony Man trail and taking pictures from the summit but the first two hikes had really taken it out of us, so we just decided to take it easy and mosey on down to the Big Meadows to check out the deer that were eating in the field. Even found two mamas with babies 😊.
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| Deer in Big Meadow |
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| More deer in Big Meadow |
After Big Meadow we went back down to The Point for a proper viewing of the sunset.
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| Sunset again at the Point Overlook |
Sunday June 5th
No national parks today, but rather heading back into Washington DC to experience a bit of the city. A few years back Rebe and I were in DC for roller coasters in Pennsylvania and before our flight out we came down to the National Mall to kill some time. I suggested we go to the Air and Space Museum because I have always been a space nerd. After visiting the A&S, it clicked that the African American museum was now open on the mall so we ran over there to see if we could get in but of course we couldn't without free tickets that were not available. So we were bummed about not getting in, but then I ran into the Baylor Women's basketball team who had just won the national championship and two of the coaches were at Georgia Tech while I was there and they GOT US INTO THE MUSEUM. And in the rush to see we went the wrong way and didn't get to see the main part of the museum but rather just the memorabilia section of the museum.
Long way to say that this time I was going to do it right, but before the museum we had brunch with some former Houstonians (Melanie and Erik) who had recently moved to the DC area. They also joined us at the museum along with another former Houston friend (Donna).
Gelato with Donna and then it was over to DCA for the flight out.
A very nice trip, short but very busy, beautiful park, glad everything went well, thank you for the blog and pictures, Lilian U
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